The Gloaming
by Marenfic
Summary: Set around Season 3 The Collaborators, in which Kara feels guilty. Written for a getyourtoaster femslash challenge. Kara/Leoben, Kara/Seelix


**The Gloaming**

_Galactica_ is crawling with people, bodies pressed in close quarters and even the recycled air that squeezes between them is heavy with stale sweat. Kara feels it coat her skin, heavy and oppressive and _frak_ she almost misses. . .

She cuts off the thought, turns a corner and rams her shoulder against the metal juncture of the walls. Punishment that rocks down her bicep and up into her neck, pain that feels better than it should and she grunts.

The sound, or maybe the grim smile that flicks across her face, catches the attention of a passing Marine and he stares at her like he knows her, like he's trying to place who she is. Kara's been on the ship for less than forty-eight hours and she isn't ready for Starbuck and salutes and _Adamas_, not yet.

"What the frak are you looking at?"

The growl of her voice gives her away; she can see the recognition flare in his face a moment before it goes blank and he looks away, passing silently.

Kara doesn't know who he thinks he sees. She doesn't recognize herself at all.

*  
_There's a mirror over the sink and once she figures out it's shatterproof she carefully avoids its reflection._

_The shower beckons her with hot running water and a collection of real soap that smells like something other than lye. She ignores that too, as best she can because showering feels like surrender and there's no frakking way she's giving him an inch. Even if she feels like she's wearing half the planet's dust on her skin. Even if she smells sour, her pores letting out the fear that she refuses to wear on her face._

_She's been bathing out of a bucket for the past eight months, just like everyone else on New Caprica. The water is always cold and it's tinged with the scent of sulfur, a smell that sticks to her hair between washings. Sam had long since stopped burying his face in it while they slept, and she tries not to think too much about why she hadn't just cut it._

_She would have, had she known what was in store, if she'd known the way Leoben would trace the cascade of blonde with his eyes like a caress, like she's beautiful._

_It's probably a blessing from the gods that she's never cared about hygiene._

_She ignores her stench, ignores the shower, doesn't even wash up in the sink for almost a week until one night, after he invites her to come to bed and she tells him to frak himself, he leans in close and buries his nose in her hair. She fights the urge to pull back, won't show him that weakness, hopes that his cylon senses are getting a ripe treat._

_"You smell earthy, just like God made you," he murmurs into her ear before pulling away, wishing her a good night._

_When she's sure he isn't coming back she goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower as hot as she can stand it. She stands under the spray until it gets cold, washes her skin and her hair until the fresh bar of scented soap is a cracked sliver in her hands._

_She tries not to enjoy it._

*  
There's a line to use the civilian head that snakes out the hatch and down the hall and she's not about to risk the officer's head and who it might hold. So she makes her way to the enlisted's head, meeting the curious and resentful stares with a cold glare that dares anyone to protest.

They're on water rations; she's heard people bitching about the fact that they can't get much more than damp before the timer shuts off the shower. Kara wouldn't know. She sticks to the sinks, to a wet cloth under her arms, between her breasts and thighs.

Kara steps up to an open space and pulls off her tank and bra before wrapping her towel around her chest and undressing the rest of the way. She's wetting her cloth when she notices that the sinks to either side of her have emptied, notices that no one is stepping up to fill the spaces. She glances up and sees a specialist she vaguely remembers from _Pegasus_ eyeing her and the sink before shaking his head.

Kara's eyes narrow in the mirror and the specialist looks away, turns toward the hatch and then he's gone. She shrugs and resumes her ablutions. The _Galactica_ is full to bursting but there's been a void growing around her, a no-entry zone that she's happy to take advantage of.

She has just finished brushing her teeth when she feels the space to her right shift and fill. Her eyes track up to the mirror and she's greeted with the sight of olive skin and short, dark hair. Kara traces her eyes over the sharp cheekbones of the woman beside her, notices the marks of resistance and rescue that still mar her face.

Her own face is smooth, unmarked.

"Captain." Seelix acknowledges with a nod, eyes on Kara's reflection and it takes her a moment to respond with a shake of her head and a bitter smile.

"Not anymore." Kara can feel interested eyes boring holes into her back, can hear the sounds in the head die down as they all wait for something. She isn't sure what. Seelix doesn't flinch at the harsh tone in her voice, though, and Kara feels the beginnings of respect for the woman bloom.

"Maybe, but that won't be true for long. They've already got me back under the birds," Seelix responds with a shrug before turning away, back to her own reflection.

Kara scowls and gathers her things together. She drops her towel off in laundry and then pushes her way through the streams of people crowding the causeway to pick up her gear from storage.

No use fighting it. At least out there in a Viper she'll be alone.

_"Don't you like the fish? It's fresh." His voice is quiet, solicitous, the perfect machine playing the perfect host. Her skin prickles, goose bumps rising in spite of the precisely controlled temperature of her domestic prison._

_She shoves the plate away with her forearm and it slides over the slick surface of the table, tips over the side and breaks into shards on the floor beside her. His head bows for the briefest moment, like he's praying to his God for patience and she bites back a smile._

_He stands, approaches her carefully and crouches down to pick up the pieces of food mixed with pottery. His eyes are on the floor when he addresses her again and she can hear the slightest hint of impatience in his oily voice._

_"You should eat what you're served, Kara. Not everyone is in this fortunate a position."_

_She can feel her stomach quaking with anger as she slides to the floor, hands and knees, pushing her face so close to his she can see the striations of blue in the iris of his eyes._

_"I like steak, but you killed all the cows you frakking bastard," she hisses as she slices through the skin and muscle of his throat with a sharp piece of her plate. His pupils dilate, chasing away the blue, and she finally allows herself a smile._

_The next night he serves her steak for the first time._

*  
Kara keeps her eye on the tin plate in front of her as Gaeta marches away. Several seconds pass and then she hears the scrape of chair legs against metal, the growing hum of resuming conversation, the tink and clink of utensils hitting trays.

The knot of rage that's been sitting in her rib cage for days grows, expands and pushes so hard she feels like she can't breathe. She wants to hurt something, wants to make someone pay for what happened to her. But Gaeta's back in uniform, back in CIC and soon she'll be back too and by then it will be too late.

Kara will be back in a cage, confined, impotent.

_Frak that._

She stands up suddenly and ignores the way her chair clatters to the deck, ignores the way everything goes silent again as all eyes land on her. There's a clear path out the door, a path that continues to clear in front of her as she stalks toward the gym to work off some of the anger that keeps her so keyed up she hasn't really slept for days.

A hand lands on her shoulder and she pauses mid-stride, briefly wondering who the hell is stupid enough to touch her now before she shrugs off the thought, shrugs off the hand and spins around to accept the challenge.

Her hand is clenched in a fist at her side, ready, but the woman standing in front of her is already holding up her palms in peace.

"Whoa, I just want to talk to you about something you might be interested in," Seelix says.

Kara relaxes her fist. "I don't give a frak about whatever it is making the gossip rounds this week," she sneers, turning her back on Seelix and she's about to start walking again when Seelix grabs her elbow and moves closer than anyone other than her husband has dared.

"Do you give a frak about what Gaeta was up to with the skin jobs?" Her breath puffs against Kara's ear in a low murmur.

Kara isn't sure if it's the words or the whisper that sparks a coiling warmth in her stomach.

*  
_"I'd like it if you joined me tonight, Kara." Leoben stands with his hand braced against the stairwell, his eyes warm and inviting even in the dim light provided by the single glowing lamp._

_He asks, every night. Never forces her and after the first month she stopped expecting violence. She's learned that his soft, measured voice is coercion enough._

_She ignores him, keeps her eyes fixed on her hands clenched tightly in her lap until she hears him sigh and move into the bedroom just beyond the stairs. He leaves the screens open, always, and she can hear him stripping down, knows that he'll be nude when he climbs between the soft sheets and pulls up the blanket._

_No blanket for her, no pillow, and she knows it's part of the price for refusing him. When she can't stand sitting one more second, she shifts and lies down instead, turning her back to the room. She didn't used to do that, either, but if he wanted her dead, he'd have killed her by now. The couch is stiff and slightly scratchy under her cheek. It's as sleek and unforgiving as everything else in this frakking prison, everything but the bed just beyond the stairs._

_Her eyes drift closed, sleep teasing as her consciousness narrows and goes black around the edges. She's almost there, almost to oblivion for a few precious hours, when a loud explosion sounds from outside and the thick window rattles in its moorings. She keeps her eyes shut and clenched but the dark is gone and now she'll be awake for hours._

_The explosions used to give her hope, each one making her try harder to find a way to escape, because the Resistance was alive and kicking and if she could only get out there, with them. . . . But there was no escape and the explosions kept coming but nothing else did. No one else did._

_Her back twinges as she rolls to her other side and faces the dark shadows that lead to her captor._

_She wonders if the Gods would look the other way if she followed him to the bedroom, laid beside him in warm softness and closed the screens against the outside._

*

Kara pulls off her boots and throws them against the base of her bunk with a snarl.

Frakking cowards pulled back before Gaeta got what he deserved, frakking cylon collaborator no matter what he thought he had to do to survive. Her body is on fire, itching for something, a fight for sure but something else too. It's been a long time since she let anyone touch her, even by accident. She's bubbling, ready to boil over and she hopes someone is stupid enough to get in her way, get in her space.

Kara's eyes land on the shelf over the mattress that used to hold her husband's things. She waits to feel something new, anything, but nothing comes. Her hand slams against the metal frame and she bites back a wince as the impact sends a wave of shock down her arm. She feels that, and it's something, releases a fraction of the tension inside her.

Kara flops into her bunk, twists and tries to get comfortable in the space that Sam has left empty. She lights a cigar and stares at the ceiling as she smokes, replaying the night's events in her mind . She _had him_. On his knees, at the end of her boot, ready to pay for all of his failures, for all of his sins. It doesn't matter to her that he saved Cally's life because she knows he wasn't there to save everyone.

Kara would have hit the button, opened the airlock and she would have watched Gaeta die while she prayed to the Gods for his soul.

The hatch to the bunk opens, the grate of metal hinges too long without oil filling the room. Kara ignores the sound and the intruder it heralds, keeps her eyes focused on the bunk above until the light around her shifts and dims. Her eyes narrow and she turns her head, expecting to see her husband but it's not, and she's surprised. Surprised, too, at the flare she feels low in her belly.

Seelix is leaning over her, bent at the waist with one hand braced against the bunk above. Her body blocks the harsh overhead lights so that her shadow is the only thing Kara can clearly make out.

"Who do you think you are, Starbuck? I didn't bring you in so you could go on some frakked up vendetta. " Her voice is low and rough with anger. Kara isn't sure if she doesn't want anyone to hear about The Circle or if she's trying to be courteous of the others who are packed in their bunks like sardines, trying to sleep. Not that it matters.

Kara stubs out the cigar and sits up, closes the distance between them until their faces are inches apart and Kara's knees are straddling Seelix's thighs. She can see her clearly now, the strong lines of her face, the accusation that sends a shot of recognition down Kara's spine.

"What's the matter? Easier to blow up empty cylon buildings planet-side than airlock a traitor just because he knew about some dog? At least I'm prepared to do something about it." Her voice is a taunt, low and mean and not at all about being careful because Kara doesn't give a frak who hears.

Seelix's eyes narrow and Kara can see the woman's fists clench in her peripheral vision. "Frak you. What were _you_ doing all those months? You so sure Gaeta's apartment was as nice as yours?"

The implications hit her in the chest, right where the knot of her rage sits, and it swells. She prepares for it to break, but it doesn't, just presses and presses until she can't tell what's anger and what's guilt.

Kara breaks her gaze and looks down at the floor, jaw clenching in a rhythm that matches the pound of blood in her ears and the cadence of her quick shallow breaths. There's the hint of a voice in her head, laughing, calling her a traitor and it sounds so frakking familiar, like it's been there all along.

She isn't aware that Seelix is moving until she's crouching in front of her. Kara lifts her face, meets the other woman's gaze and she tries to hide the chaos that's bouncing inside her head but knows she fails when Seelix's face softens, her warm brown eyes seeing more than Kara wants to show.

"Gods, Starbuck, I shouldn't have said that. I don't know. . . I didn't mean. . ."

Kara leans forward and presses her lips over Seelix's, hard, so she can't say anything else. It's desperate and full of things Kara would never ask for, not out loud, but her lips and her tongue have always been more eloquent in silence anyway. Seelix goes completely still for a moment and just when Kara's sure she's going to pull away, Seelix whimpers into Kara's mouth and slides her hands over Kara's thighs.

Kara kisses her harder, pulls her up into the bunk, up into her empty places, presses Seelix down into the thin mattress with hips and lips and doesn't let her say another word.

Doesn't let her take anything back.

*

_"I love you," she tells him._

_Takes it back a moment later with a twist of her knife in his heart._


End file.
